From bad to worse for NSW Liberals at ICAC

Kate McClymont, Michaela Whitbourn

Thursday was one of the most extraordinary days ever seen at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. As if the explosive evidence given by former Labor MP Jodi McKay about bribery, corruption and her colleagues' treachery wasn't enough, behind the scenes even more sensational developments were brewing.

Thursday's hearings finished with a fraught McKay giving a doorstop interview to journalists outside the commission's Castlereagh Street entrance. Upstairs, meanwhile, investigators were examining new material which had just arrived. On Friday morning counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson, SC, dropped the bombshell. Allegations of corruption were levelled against NSW Police Minister Mike Gallacher, who subsequently stepped down from the ministry.

The minister's barrister, Arthur Moses, SC, went ballistic. He complained to Commissioner Megan Latham that he received 20 minutes' notice that he should come to the inquiry to hear the evidence. It was then revealed to the inquiry that the new information had arrived less than 24 hours earlier. So serious was the information that the current proceedingsmay well be stopped while the material was further investigated, Watson told the inquiry.

Nathan Tinkler. Photo: Rob Homer

This week's explosive new ICAC inquiry has focused on claims that a group of central coast Liberals collected prohibited donations from "unscrupulous businessmen" including former coal magnate Nathan Tinkler.

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The damaging evidence of cash for favours and money laundering by former Liberal energy minister Chris Hartcher and his associates was interrupted briefly – but sensationally – by the former member for Newcastle, Jodi McKay.

McKay revealed she knocked back Tinkler’s attempt in 2011 to subvert the ban on developer donations by getting hundreds of his employees to donate to her campaign.

Joe Tripodi. Photo: Rob Homer

Tinkler’s attempted bribe was bad enough. But McKay soon discovered her colleague, then treasurer Eric Roozendaal, not only knew of Tinkler’s offer but was doing his utmost to grant the millionaire coalminer’s plans to build a billion-dollar coal loader in a residential area.

McKay wept when she learned that another ministerial colleague, Joe Tripodi, had joined forces with Tinkler to undermine her attempts to hold the seat at the March 2011 election because of her opposition to the coal loader.

Tinkler's property development group, Buildev, appears to have been adept at working both sides of politics.

Jodi McKay.

One of the major claims in the ICAC's inquiry into secret Liberal slush funds is that Buildev secretly channelled $66,000 into Eightbyfive, a "sham company" set up by Hartcher adviser Tim Koelma, in return for political favours from the former minister. The cash was paid before the 2011 election by Tinkler's horse racing business Patinack Farm. The inquiry has now heard allegations Gallacher was intimately involved in the "corrupt scheme".

Among other businessmen who allegedly bought Hartcher's political influence were property developers Nabil and Nicholas Gazal, who entertained Hartcher and energy minister Anthony Roberts in the Whitsundays aboard their 82-foot luxury yacht Octavia. (Roberts insists he paid for his own airfares and costs and was not a minister at the time.)

The Gazals' company Gazcorp allegedly funnelled $137,000 into Eightbyfive for "fake services", while Australian Water Holdings, linked to disgraced former Labor minister Eddie Obeid and his family, allegedly stumped up $183,000.

Chris Hartcher. Photo: Louise Kennerley

In a week with no shortage of extravagantly weird allegations, the commission heard that an avowedly “anti-socialist” Timothy Trumbull, a Sydney accountant, used Irish backpackers as “fronts” to donate $4000 to the NSW Liberals because he had already reached his own maximum donation under state donations laws.

Trumbull took three cheques to Warringah identity John Caputo, a fund-raiser for Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Premier Mike Baird. Caputo gave the cheques to Hartcher, who then laundered the $4000 through his old law firm’s trust account.